Networking in Tokyo

by P.H. Ferguson and Thomas Boatman

(Charles Tuttle, 1997)

WOODY ALLEN once said, "Eighty percent of success is just showing up." You'll never know how accurate these words are until you spend some time in Tokyo, a place where it's easy to become invisible if you stay indoors. On the other hand, the foreign or gaijin community in Japan is a very small world. If you live here long enough to realize that, you'll know that you are also going to find quite a few opportunities simply falling into your lap, opportunities you might not have encountered had you been living someplace where everybody speaks English. The fact is, you can go a long way in Japan by just "showing up." This book itself was the result of a meeting between two like-minded individuals who came together as a result of networking.

As you'll discover in Japan, networking is something you can do with a minimum of effort. You can amass an extensive network of both professional contacts and by merely showing up attending those parties held by people you really don't know very well, or by going to that possibly boring dissertation on Japan U.S. relations even though you are sure you don't have the time.

Take it from us, you always have time. Whatever else you have to do, there's always time to "show up." And showing up is the easiest way to get ahead, especially in Japan.

It's a chain reaction: the more you network, the more it pays off. You may even find yourself at a job interview where the person asking you questions is a member of the organization you recently joined.

If we're making it sound simple, it's because it really is easy. Take it from us: Use this book. Always be armed with plenty of meishi or business cards, an essential tool for networking in Tokyo. Start showing up and watch what happens.

You'll find that the organizations we've described in this book are generally forums where foreigners and Japanese of similar interests get together to mix, mingle, have fun, and share information. Most have been around for a few years, and some have even been meeting for more than a century. One thing they tend to have in common is that by keeping formal constitutions and publishing regular newsletters they manage to stay together despite the high turnover rate in Tokyo's foreign community. We did not include groups formed around a religious affiliation or an expatriate lifestyle, because such circles are, by definition, limited and they survive quite comfortably on word of mouth.

At any given time, there are tens of thousands of English-speaking foreign residents moving in, bustling around, and moving out of the Tokyo area. In writing about almost one hundred of the oldest and largest of their groups, we cannot guarantee we've uncovered all of them. But we'd like to. If you belong to an English-speaking organization you think we should know about, by all means write to us care of this publisher and tell us about yourselves.